Sections

Friday, May 16, 2014

Fort Hood Army Base

Matt Firth

Staff Writer

On April 2, at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, Specialist Ivan Lopez shot 19 people because of a denial of his request for leave. 3 people died and 16 are significantly injured. Lopez suffered from both anxiety and depression. Lopez used a .45 caliber handgun, driving in his own car. He ended up committing suicide after a confrontation with a police officer.

This is not the first shooting at Fort Hood in recent history, in 2009 there was another shooting there that had many more casualties. This most recent shooting took place over a huge area and has caused many hardships among the families of the victims. 35 total shots were fired over the course of the shooting and covered an area larger than two city blocks.

One of the dead soldiers was Sergeant First Class Daniel Ferguson, who died while barricading a door to prevent Lopez from getting into a room with a large number of people. If he hadn’t blocked the door, there would have been many more injuries and deaths. So far it has appeared the Lopez chose his victims largely at random, and fired a total of 35 shots. Not only did Lopez drive through the base, he also went into three buildings and fired inside at soldiers inside of them. At the start of his rampage in the Administration Building, he injured ten of the sixteen total injured soldiers.

This terrible shooting is not the only thing to have caused havoc at Fort Hood lately, a fire, which ended up burning an area of 1,500 acres. The fire, which started during a training exercise, spread quickly with the strong winds, but put no buildings at risk of burning. The fire crews were unable to fight the fire initially because of the danger of explosives being set off. They were eventually able to start fighting the fire from the air.

President Obama and the First Lady travelled to Fort Hood to attend the memorial service for the fallen soldiers. He remarked: “It is love, tested by tragedy, that brings us together again.”